gutter

Water-related meanings

• A gutter is a long, thin trough, usually one that runs straight.
• A gutter (sometimes referred to as a ditch) runs along a street or road (if there is a sidewalk, the gutter is often between the road and the sidewalk) and carries water away from the thoroughfare into a sewer.
• A gutter (sometimes referred to as an eavestrough, guttering, or rain gutter), is a narrow channel which runs along the eaves of a building and serves to collect rain water and direct it down away from the roof to prevent drips off the roof edges. These drips can cause structural damage, over time, to the walls of a building.

Other

• In bowling, the gutters are long grooves on either side of a lane which are slightly wider than a bowling ball, and into which a ball can easily roll. If it does, the ball cannot strike any pins, and the player receives no points for that throw.
• In editorial design, the gutter is the line where two pages come together in a two-page spread.
• In typography a gutter is the space between columns of printed text. This has been adapted into comics jargon to describe the narrow spaces between panels.
• In comics, the gutter is the space between the panels, and, according to Scott McCloud, is where all of the real action happens in a comic.
• In internet forums, the gutter is a specialized forum where few to none of the forum's general rules apply, allowing approved Gutter members to post questionable content that would normally merit deletion in the general forum.
• The popular image of a drunk or bum lying in such a trench gave rise to the adjective "gutter", meaning vulgar. Related to this popular usage are the idioms "to be in the gutter", meaning "to be down on one's luck" and "having one's mind in the gutter", meaning "having vulgar thoughts".